The Way It Could Be
by TheVulpineHero1
Summary: Ten drabbles based around the ZackxTifa pairing. Done on request.
1. Road Trip

_Road Trip

* * *

_

"Nibelheim, huh..."

It's Cloud. His voice rises timidly into the air. He's still having a hard time with his travel sickness.

"Your hometown, right?" Zack asks. The truck wobbles a little, and Cloud takes a moment.

"Yeah. Can't say I'm looking forwards to it. I promised a girl there I'd get into SOLDIER. _That_ worked out well."

A moment passes. "She pretty?"

"I wouldn't know. She was, anyway."

A second or so of awkwardness.

"Well, we'd better work quick. Wouldn't want anything to happen to her."

Sephiroth clears his throat, and a dragon roars.


	2. Mountainside

_Mountainside

* * *

_

Mt. Nibel's peaks are jagged as knives, serrated and sharp to catch anyone who falls. She knows by experience. She remembers, in a hazy fog, the time she ran carelessly across the peaks, tears in her eyes and hoping to fall. And then she did.

It's her job to stop the Shinra from falling on their way up the mountain. Even though she doesn't like Sephiroth, she doesn't want him to become a Shinra-kabob on the pointy rocks. They come to the bridge, probably the most dangerous place on the whole mountain.

"I'll go first," she says, shifting her weight carefully on the boards.

One of the Shinra soldiers makes a muffled gulp behind his mask.

"Nah, I'll take point. I'd rather be the one to go splat. At least I won't have to clean it up," the black haired SOLDIER says cheerfully.

She waves away his fears like fireflies, and carries on. He starts to call to her, loudly, the echoes bouncing across the mountain range: "No, come back!" She's almost insulted. What, the big brave SOLDIER doesn't think she can cross a piddly little rope bridge? She's so insulted she doesn't even hear the ominous crack.

Next thing she knows, she's falling, tumbling through the air. Her heart jumps as she realises that she's falling even faster than last time, she's even heavier, and it's going to hurt a lot more-

She feels a hand grab hers, and her momentum changes, like she's on a pulley. When she finally hits ground, it isn't ground, because ground isn't firm but giving, and doesn't groan in pain.

"Oh! Are you okay?"

Black Haired SOLDIER boy is underneath her, in no small degree of pain. She gets off quickly, although as she does her fingertips graze the muscles of his chest.

"Gah...He'd never forgive me," he mutters, sitting up. "You're not as heavy as I thought you'd be."

She doesn't know whether it's a compliment or an insult, but he's injured so she hugs him just the same.


	3. Constellation

_Constellation (AU)

* * *

_

Cloud told him to find her and protect her.

It's not something he's sure to do. He's alone. It's a big world out there, and it'll take him a long time.

But his best friend's grave is always in his mind.

He leans, jaunty, pensive, on the bars of the ferry boat to Costa Del Sol. Almost as if he wanted to fall through. Nibelheim- her last known location.

Somewhere, in the night sky, he's sure Cloud is smiling on him. And he'll follow those stars to Tifa- the girl with the brown eyes, in that long-burnt photograph.


	4. Tai Chi

_Tai Chi

* * *

_

She was a student of Zangan, following the way of the fist. She was also the town's best tour guide. And damn, was she pretty.

He was a SOLDIER, first class. He was a 'monster' with a cheerful grin. And he was pretty much welded to her side.

Admittedly, it wasn't his fault. It was Sephiroth, of course. He'd bookmarked Zack as her escort the second the photograph had been taken, and Tifa had moved closer to him to create a marked and pointed contrast between Spehiroth's prideful aloofness and the rest of the world.

Of course, she wanted to fight, to show off her martial prowess. It's natural that you want to use a skill you've got, just like equipping new materia to observe the effect. But he couldn't let her- firstly because Cloud was literally fifteen seconds behind him and watching like a hawk, and secondly because all her 'martial prowess' counted for squat up here. He was SOLDIER. He knew what battle was.

"So, you're in SOLDIER, right? A friend of mine went to join when I was a kid. Ever hear of Cloud Strife?" she asked.

The soldier tailing them mis-stepped briefly.

"Uh...Sure. I mean, I went through the training with the guy." Zack lied easily, noting the playful shake of Cloud's machinegun. "But we, uh, got assigned to different squads. I hear he's doing fine."

"Oh, that's great! Next time you see him, tell him I said hi, will you?" Tifa smiled, grabbing his arm with fingers used to being fists.

He nodded. With a happy clap, she released her vicegrip. But he couldn't help but feel his skin prickle warmly where her fingertips had been.


	5. Dance

_Dance (AU)

* * *

_

It's hard to sum it up without sounding like a pervert.

She's got a strange kind of beauty. And, no, he doesn't mean her chest, or the almost sinful miniskirt. Although, the miniskirt _does_ help.

Wait, start again. It's the legs. Actually, that doesn't sound any better at all. Fighting style, then? Let's go with that.

Her fighting is almost like dancing. Passionate, graceful, and involved, just like her. Of course, then there was that guy who said that dancing is just a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire, so, it's still a little pervy, but it's the best he can do, really. But, there's something beautiful (and just the _tiniest_ bit erotic) about watching her naked legs dance effortlessly between the face of one drunken pervert and the next. He almost wants to see her at the beach, running across the sand and framed by sunlight, half an ice-cream dripping from the cone and dripping onto her toes. Wait, that sounds pervy, too.

Just, y'know, give up. Just as you can never truly capture light in a portrait, he can never really turn her beauty into words. He's seen warriors who can blow the world away, but there's something about the way she moves that he has to see to believe. It makes him all the more determined to see it again.


	6. Hand Me Downs

_Hand-Me-Downs (AU)

* * *

_

They never had the heart to get rid of her old stuff. Sure, they could have sold her first staff for about a hundred gil, but at what price to their memories?

"Wait. You're giving me a stick? What am I supposed to do with it? Join the cheerleaders, twirl it like a baton?" he jokes, when Tifa hands it to him.

"It was Aerith's. We kept it around after she...well..."

Her voices breaks, like the bridge at Mt. Nibel, cracking in the middle. He pulls her into a hug.

"She wouldn't have wanted you to cry."


	7. Answering Machine

_Answering Machine (AU)

* * *

_

It's strange, to hear someone's voice on an answering machine. Words spoken to someone who might not be there, like a prayer to a false god. He's reminded, painfully, of a sweet, dead girl who sent him letters in his sleep, letters that he never got to read.

"_Zack. I'd really like it if you'd cheer Cloud up tonight. He's brooding, and I don't know why."_

He chuckles inaudibly. If it could be heard, it'd sound cheerful. Like the rain sounds wet. Sounds can be deceptive.

He laughs because he knows _exactly _why Cloud's brooding. It's because he, Zack, gets on so well with Tifa. It's because of all these fluttering answerphone messages she leaves that he feels compelled to respond to. It's jealousy.

Of what, though? He stands, and he wonders, because the lights are off and the only sounds in his flat are the soulless hum of the fridge, and the imaginary melody of Cloud and his banter with his group of friends who saved the world. The loneliness is almost palpable, and he plays Tifa's message again, listening to her voice break the crushing silence.

But, he thinks as the message ends for the fifth time, easy come, easy go. He pulls on some clean pants and a shirt that isn't covered in coffee stains, and prepares to cheer Cloud up, SOLDIER style- with a stiff drink.


	8. In Love, Spin Atoms

_In Love, Spin Atoms (AU)

* * *

_

Love is confusing.

He's known it for a while. At first, he didn't realise it, and he was fine. His enthusiasm just carried him forwards without faltering, an unstoppable force in the face of insurmountable odds.

But when he finally came to rest, riddled with bullets, he realised exactly what had happened to him. He was in love. And, even if he could move his legs, he wouldn't, because he felt so damn dizzy, like the atoms in his brain had suddenly all been dumped on a turntable and whizzed a couple hundred times.

By the time he could move his legs again without collapsing, the dizzyness had disappeared. It was the beginning of a great, yawning void in his life, a time of recovery from massive illnesses. He forgot a lot of things, and, in his absence, forgot what love was like, even if he never forgot the one who gave it to him.

"Zack, that's got no relevance at all, you know," she says, pulling her gloves back on. "I asked why you were so bad at sparring today."

"No relevance? Well, as an old friend used to say, there's no loss in not knowing," he grins, nursing his jaw.

He gets to his feet again, and dusts himself down. He got rusty when he was in recovery. Before he can put up a guard, she's already upon him. He feels her glove hit him once, twice, three times in the face, and staggers back. The world swims in front of his eyes.

In love, or just punch drunk? He sometimes wonders if there's any difference.


	9. November Winds

_Her Letter (AU)

* * *

_

November. A whole year after they found him, alive and well, living quietly in a nameless town with a hundred bullet scars and a tale of dogged survival. A year after they told him Aerith was dead.

They're all supportive, even the strangers and the teenagers and the weirdo ex-Turk who may or may not have been in the coffin he saw that one time.

Tifa, the girl from the photograph, brought him up to speed. About Cloud, and his belief that he'd been in SOLDIER; their adventures saving the planet, and Sephiroth.

She drops by often. There's something caring about her, almost motherly. Cloud drops by, too, slightly gloomier than he remembers him. Zack tells him he needs to man up, and Cloud gives him a wry, unwilling smile.

"Gotta live in your own future, Cloud," he winks. "After all, we kinda shared the past."

She's there with them, on the day they finally say goodbye to that past. They each brought a burden. In Cloud's hand, the photograph from Nibelheim. In Zack's, Aerith's letter. Gently, they allow the November wind to carry them away, spiralling into the sky. Tifa watches as her warriors bid farewell to who they were, and looks forward to who they'll be. As they walk back, Zack catches her arm and grins his thanks.


	10. The Graveyard

_The Graveyard (AU)

* * *

_

They walked through the graveyard together, him and her. They offer flowers for the people who died in the Gongaga blast- as well as his parents.

"I'm sorry, Zack. There was a raid, during the Deepground Incident. It took everyone by surprise, and we...we couldn't..."

The quiet Gongagan village is empty, but the animals in the jungle go on like nothing happened, like no one was ever there.

"At least I don't have to fork out for a retirement home, huh..?" he says half-heartedly. It sounds callous, but sometimes you need to laugh to survive.

"Same here. Don't know how we'd pay for all those orphans if I still had my dad to worry about," she concedes.

He laughs, timidly. She follows suit, and soon they're both at it. The sound tastes sour in his throat, but somehow, it's necessary.

"Hn...Is everything okay?"

Vincent Valentine stalks from the shadows. No human emotion flickers across his face, but concern is hidden within the deepest recesses of his voice. He accompanies them out of guilt.

"Hey. I gotta hand it to my ma and pa, though," Zack says quietly. "Even after all that time, they never built me a grave."

"They always believed you'd come home alive. They asked us about you, when we passed through," she says.

"Come home alive? Ha...Well, I guess I did."

The earth is cold, but the jungle air is warm and sticky on his skin. It makes him glad to be alive.


	11. Endnote

_Endnotes

* * *

_

These were very difficult for me, simply because of Zack. I've played FFVII and Dirge Of Cerberus, and seen AC; however, Zack barely appears in any of them, and I don't really have a firm (or any) grasp of his character. A lot of these also had to be Alternate Universes, a form I don't use often, because of canon events that limit the pairing.

I should probably say that in some of these (Constellation, definitely) I borrowed the motivation from Splintered Dreams, a Zack/Tifa fic that's on this site. Go read it; it's a far better example of this pairing.

Other than that, well, I hope you've enjoyed it.


End file.
